Christmas with... GRANDMAMA!

Well this will be the first of many "Christmas with..." fill in the blank. Since we will be in Winnsboro and Grandmama will be in Dallas on Christmas Day, we had a Tuesday night burger supper over at her house to exchange gifts. Both kids were pretty excited, and promptly started play with the other kid's toy. It was pretty funny :)

Enjoy the photos!

An easel to share!

Hank caught on to this electric screwdriver toy REALLY quickly.

Cute little wooden stand mixer set.

Pretty Daddy!

Life is very sharp

"Life is very sharp" Hank very seriously told us as we were tucking him in for bed.

"Where did you hear that?" we asked.

"The fussing and fighting song" he replied.

(long pause)

Then James got it "Life is very sharp, and there's no time for fussing and fighting, my friend"

Trimming the tree!

We finally got around to finishing up the Christmas tree last night! Hooray! It's been up since Saturday, but I was sick this weekend and putting the ornaments on just didn't happen till Tuesday night. Both kids were in a sort of grumpy mood, and so even though I tried extra hard to keep things "even" by giving each one their own box full of ornaments to put on, it still turned into a fighting event. Sigh! Oh well. Maggie just didn't get it and was sort of working against Hank, who was being super efficient at hanging the ornaments and taking his job very seriously.

Then came time to put the star on top, and Hank was really excited. He had been talking about putting the star on top all night. So I was totally shocked and impressed when he put it on, then took it right back off to give Maggie a turn! How sweet is that?! Then she didn't understand and copied Hank -- she put it on and then took it back off to give him another turn. Super cute and funny :)

And everyone looked adorable in their footy pj's and Santa apron. Maggie even got a turn in the apron.

One more hug...

Hank and Santa Claus

We spotted Santa when we went to Toy Fair yesterday and Maggie didn't even want to get CLOSE to him with me holding her, so I didn't push it. I noticed us in the background of this photo with Hank...

Hank, of course, was all about it and told Santa his name and what he wanted for Christmas: a train with wheels that go on a track (I have a STRONG feeling that Santa has already purchased this for him! Woo hoo!).

This morning I was talking to Hank about him being good for Santa. He told me he already did. I laughed and said No! You have to be good all the time until Christmas. Then he told me he let Santa know he wanted one thing (the train) and out of nowhere he said "Oh no! I forgot to thank him for the movie game!" -- he wanted to thank Santa for his gift last year! Too sweet. So this afternoon I helped him write a thank you note:

Hugs

Pigtails!

I managed to get most of Maggie's hair into a set of pigtails the other night and it was the cutest thing I've seen in a long time. She really enjoyed it too :) I know there are way too many photos here, but she's so darn cute! I couldn't narrow it down to a few.

Gingerbread House Fail

Well, I thought it would be fun to decorate a gingerbread house together this year. Really, I knew it would end up being a mess. But when we opened the box and saw the house in a million pieces, it ended up being a much bigger mess than I thought.


Here's my attempt to glue it together with icing:

It immediately fell apart. So after Maggie went to bed, I had the idea of laying it all out flat on a cookie sheet and decorating it in 2-D instead of 3-D. Hank and James took this very seriously, and went to work. I mean, Hank was super focused and worked hard to get all of that candy stuck into that huge glob of icing. He said he was in charge of putting the candy on there, and James was in charge of "mushing" it into the icing. They did a fantastic job. And they didn't eat too much of it either.